BBBBB EEEEEE FFFFFF OOOOO RRRRR EEEEEE BB BB EE FF OO OO RR RR EE BB BB EE FF OO OO RR RR EE BBBBB EEEEE FFFFF OO OO RRRRR EEEEE BB BB EE FF OO OO RR RR EE BB BB EE FF OO OO RR RR EE BBBBB EEEEEE FF OOOOO RR RR EEEEEE DDDD AA WW WW NN NN DD DD AAAA WW WW NNN NN DD DD AA AA WW WW NNNNNN DD DD AA AA WW W WW NNNNNN DD DD AAAAAA WWWWWWW NN NNN DD DD AA AA WWW WWW NN NN DDDD AA AA WW WW NN NN Version 1.2x Shareware ========= Copyright (c) 1993 by Arne Rudolph All rights reserved Arne Rudolph Salvatorstraže 2 52070 Aachen Germany EMail: Mausnet: Arne Rudolph @ AC _Page_1__________________________________________________________ 1. Statement 'Before Dawn' is copyright (c) 1993 by Arne Rudolph - all rights reserved! This program is NOT Public Domain! You may distibute it freely as long as it is free to the customer. The distribution on PD disks and commercial mailbox systems has to be authorized by me. I hold the right to withdraw this authorization at any time. I, Arne Rudolph, don't undertake liability for any direct or in- direct damage, including, but not restricted to, material or fi- nancial damage, caused by the use of 'Before Dawn' or the unsui- tability of 'Before Dawn' for a specific purpose. 2. Shareware 'Before Dawn' is Shareware! This means you may test 'Before Dawn' freely for four weeks. If you decide to use 'Before Dawn' regu- larly or use it longer than the specified four week period, you have to register as a user. The registration fee is 20 DM! If you enclose the eqivalent of $20 you will receive a disk with the latest version of 'Before Dawn'. Please don't send cash - a cashable cheque is sufficient! My bank account: Arne Rudolph Postgiroamt Hamburg Konto-Nr. 554658 - 209 BLZ: 200 100 20 _Page_2__________________________________________________________ 3. A brief description 'Before Dawn' is a modular screensaver for all ATARI ST/STE/TT or Falcon. It uses GEM-Image graphics to display animations while saving your precious screen. 'Before Dawn' offers three different modules: - 'Warp 5 - Mr. Sulu!', a starfield simulation. - 'Bouncing Hole', a peektrough-hole bounces around your screen. - 'At the Movies', a rather complex module to design your own animations without any knowledge of C or any other programming language! All modules allow to load GEM-Image pixel files, so that you can alter the apperance of your screensaver. Example: you would like to see your company's logo bouncing around the screen, while the saver is active? No problem: just scan the logo and change it in- to the format 'Before Dawn' needs. You may use any graphic pro- gram that is able to create GEM-Image files. This manual will try to explain how to use 'Before Dawn', but it will try to do so very briefly. The reason why is, that the next update of 'Before Dawn' will bring many changes. This would mean writing the manual again - a very difficult task if you're not a native speaker of English. On the other hand there are not that much foreign customers by now. I hope the information supplied is sufficient to get to work with 'Before Dawn'. You will also find English resource files and two IMGs that explain how to create animations for the modules 'At the Movies' and 'Warp 5 - Mr. Sulu!' in this folder! _Page_3__________________________________________________________ 4. Installing 'Before Dawn' Copy DAWN.ACC and DAWN.RSC into the rootdirectory of your boot disk. Copy DAWNAUTO.PRG into your AUTO folder. All other files may be placed anywhere on your disk. Reboot your system. After you have rebooted your system, you may do all necessary alterations in 'Before Dawn'. Usually the pre- set options work fine, but paths to the IMG files have to be set. 5. How to use the dialogs 'Before Dawn' uses window dialogs. All buttons are selectable by mouse and by keyboard. If you prefer using the keyboard just press the underlined key in combination with the ALTERNATE key to select/deselect the item. The ENTER key on the numeric keypad skips from one editable field to the next. 'OK' usually leaves the dialog and accepts all alterations. It is by default selectable with the RETURN key. 'Cancel' leaves the dialog without accepting the alterations. 'Set' can be found in all but the 'Info' dialog and acts like 'OK' only that it does not exit the dialog. 5.1. ''Before Dawn'' dialog 'Module' selects one of the modules 'Before Dawn' offers. 'Setup' opens the 'Setup' dialog for the selected module. 'Random selection' if selected 'Before Dawn' randomly selects one of the three modules when it is activated. ''Before Dawn' active after __ minutes' if selected 'Before Dawn' starts saving after __ minutes if there have been no actions by the user in this period. 'Info' vital information about 'Before Dawn' - read this and weep. 'Options' opens the 'Options' dialog. 'Save' saves all options. _Page_4__________________________________________________________ 5.2. 'Options' dialog 'Watch ...' selects all the system events that will be watched by 'Before Dawn'. 'Timesharing' when selected, 'Before Dawn' not only allows other processes to make screen outputs via the AES, but also continuously makes an 'event_multi'. 'Center dialogs' if selected all dialogs are displayed at the center of the screen. 'Change color index 0 to black' the RGB values of color index 0 are changed to black if a XIMG file is loaded. Usefull if you are using an ATARI in low ST or TT resolutions. 'Wake-/sleep corner' selects the size of the wake-/sleep corner in pixel. The wake corner is the bottom left and the sleep corner the bottom right corner of the screen. 'Mouse sensitivity' selects how many mouse-packets shall be received until screen- saving is terminated. 'Reserve memory' reserves memory for IMG caching. 'Sound by ...' selects the program that takes care of the sound effects. You may use PAULA, a player for MOD-files, or CrazySounds a player for samples sold by 'maxon' in Germany. 'Change vectors' selects when 'Before Dawn' should change the system vectors selected under 'Watch ...'. Usually 'always' works fine, but some programs just don't like it. So if you encounter a system hangup while 'Before Dawn' activates itself, try setting this popup to 'at boot' or 'after dialog'. _Page_5__________________________________________________________ 5.3. Setup 'Bouncing Hole' 'Image-File Selection' selects the IMG file to be used by this module. You may enter a wildcard to randomly select between more IMGs. 'MOD/HSN-File Selection' selects the MOD- or HSN-file to be played. HSN-file are played by CrazySounds whenever the IMG touches a side of the screen. Wildcard possible! 5.4. Setup 'Warp 5' 'The galaxy has __ stars!' selects the number of stars to be animated. 'Image-File Selection' selects the animations IMG file. 'Frames in IMG-file: __' selects the number of frames of the animations IMG-file. 'MOD/HSN-File Selection' selects the MOD- or HSN-file to be played. HSN-file are played by CrazySounds from time to time. Wildcard possible! 5.5. Setup 'At the Movies' 'Info-File Selection' selects the BDI-file that contains all necessary information to display an animation. Wildcard possible! BDI-files are created with EDITOR.PRG from this archive. It also creates sound information files called BDS-files, if you are using CrazySounds. BDS-files are loaded automatically. 'MOD-File Slection' selects the MOD-file to be played. Wildcard possible! _Page_6__________________________________________________________ 6. The 'Movie-Editor' When using the 'Movie-Editor' you might notice that it's slightly different in apperance. This is, because I have been using the MyDial library instead of Chirstian Grunenberg's Enhanced GEM library. This is going to change in the future, but for the mo- ment I don't have the time to switch libraries. What's the idea behind the 'Movie-Editor'? Earlier versions of 'Before Dawn' had the problem, that you al- ways had to change the complete setup, just to load a new ani- mation for the module 'At the Movies'. With the 'Movie-Editor' you may edit an animation, save it into a BDI-file and reload it as often as you like. 6.1 The 'Info' menu You will find vital information about the author of this program in this menu. Look into this menu at least once a day, otherwise it might get lonely and start living its own life (and who knows what will happen then - party time ;-) 6.2. The 'Open' menu Clicking here will open a GEM fileselector. Select the BDI-File you wish to edit. If you enter a non-existant filename the editor will keep that name until you try to save it. 6.3. The 'Save' menu You guessed it! This menu saves the BDI-file you have been edi- ting. If you have made wrong entries or no entries at all, you will be promted with an alert box. If you have made entries in the 'Sound' menu, the editor will save the corresponding BDS-file automatically. So please don't worry about how to save a BDS-file. 6.4. The 'Quit' menu This menu immediately quits the editor. If you have not saved your BDI-file it is gone. _Page_7__________________________________________________________ 6.5. The 'Global' menu 'Start X:' and 'Start Y:' define the starting point of the animation. 'Use complete screen' tells 'At the Movies' to start animations not only in the specified edge of the screen, but using all adjacent sides, too. 'Direction: __ degrees' the direction, the animations should be moved into. Note: 0 degrees ist upward, 90 degrees to the right, 180 de- grees downward and 270 degrees to the left. 'Number' specifies the number of animations in the used IMG file. See MAKEMOVI.IMG for more detail. 'Number of objects' specifies the number of objects to be moved around the screen. 'Animation-Image-File Selection' selects the IMG file to be used. No wildcards here! 'Author' leaves space for the author of the animation to immortalize himself. 6.6. The 'Animation x' menu 'in direction'/'against direction' specifies, whether this sequence should be moved in or against the direction specified in the 'Global' menu. 'Stepsize' is the size of steps between each painted frame. 'Speed' well, its the speed of this sequence. 'Frames'/'Width'/'Height' specifies the number of frames and its width and height. See MAKEMOVIE.IMG for more detail. _Page_8__________________________________________________________ 'continuous'/'single without stop'/'single with stop' selects the way, this sequence should be animated. It may ei- ther be drawn countinuously, that is it will start at the first frame if the last frame has been painted, or it it may be drawn once. The last option is divided into two more options. 'single with stop' will draw your animation in the specified stepsize and frequency, but will draw only the last frame, when all pre- vious frames have been painted. 'single without stop' will draw it in a way so that the first frame is painted in the starting point and the last frame in the opposite corner. 'Frame frequency' specifies the frequency at which the frames will follow each other. A frequency of 1 means, that each step a new frame will be painted. At a frequency of 2 the next frame will be painted after two steps ... 'Steps ahead' when using the 'single with stop' option, it may happen, that part of the animation will be drawn 'off screen'. To prevent this, you may enter how many steps the first frame should be painted until the animation starts. 'Relative to stepsize' means that 'Frame frequency' and 'Steps ahead' not only depend on the number of steps, but also on the size of each step. Example: wheels turning realtive to their moving speed. 'Follows animation' animations may follow each other. Note: continuous loops and animations moving in different directions are not allowed. 6.7 'Sound' menu You may select one HSN-file for each animation. This soundfile has to be linked to a frame in the animation sequence. 6.8. 'Test' menu If you have 'Before Dawn' installed, you can test the edited ani- mation with this menu. _Page_9__________________________________________________________ 7. The end This completes our very brief journey through the depths of 'Before Dawn'. It is quite possible, that there are still some questions to be asked and answered, but for the moment this is all I can offer you. Try playing around with 'Before Dawn' and the 'Movie-Editor' to find out what all these mystic options mean and how to use them. This manual may not be one of my best works in English as well, but considering that I typed it into my com- puter in just one afternoon it should at least help you finding your way through the first steps with 'Before Dawn'. The pictures MAKEMOVI and MAKESTAR may help you, too. Corrections of this manual are always welcome! You will find my address somewhere at the top of this manual. Finally I have to give some credits to all those people that helped in one way or the other. In alphabetical order: Stefan Becker Catch Computer J”rg Granzow Martin Heise Dirk Johannwerner Richard Kurz Ruth Langohr Jens Lehmann Michael Schwingen Achim Wilhelm Ralf Zimmermann and all those others who reported bugs and painted these stunning animations! And - last but not least - I have to give credit to Christian Grunenberg who supplied the 'Enhanced GEM' library. I can recom- mend this library to any programmer, who would like to have such neat window-dialogs in his program as 'Before Dawn' has. That's all for now and don't forget to support shareware! Aachen, August 26 1993 Arne Rudolph